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Topicalities: the years 2004-2005 |
| news on the Shikanda portal : Wim van Binsbergen's publications and work in progress |
This series (established February 2002; on this page only topicalities for 2004-2005 are included; the series was initiated in 2002; click here for the years 2002 and 2003; and here for the years 2006-2007; and here for the years 2008-2009; and here for the years 2010-2011; and here for the years 2012-2013 ) is to alert the visitor of new additions and changes in the Shikanda portal, and reports on recent and forthcoming developments in Wim van Binsbergen's professional activities inthe fields of African Studies, Intercultural Philosophy, Long-Range Cultural Analysis, and Poetry. Hyperlinks give access to the texts in question, and photographs accompany the entries. The information appears in tabulated form. The closer to the top of this page, the more recent an event is. Some events have a page of their own, accessible via a hyperlink; others are merely summarised below, and may then have a simple illustration to mark them.
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if you are through with the topical information below, proceed to the Shikanda portal in order to access all other websites by Wim van Binsbergen: general (intercultural philosophy, African Studies); ethnicity-identity-politics; Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate; Ancient Models of Thought in Africa, the Ancient Near East, and prehistory; sangoma consultation; literary work | |
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information Wim van Binsbergen get Acrobat Reader |
This search facility provides a complete electronic index of the present website on ethnicity, and of all of Wim van Binsbergen's other websites in the present domain, and moreover enables you to search the entire Internet quickly and effectively; simply enter the word(s) you require into the blank search box, and press 'Search'
The many issues touched upon in Wim van
Binsbergen's research and publications often invite specific
comments and queries from site visitors. Often such exchanges
have a more than personal relevance, and often others would like
to join in. This is now possible with the new Shikanda Forum and
Message Board. 
on this page only topicalities for 2004-2005 are included; the series was initiated in 2002; click here for the years 2002 and 2003; and here for the years 2006-2007; and here for the years 2008-2009; and here for the years from 2010-
NB: the default language in this webpage is English; however, the site owner lives and works in the Netherlands, and writes poetry in Dutch; entries reflecting an entirely national Dutch context will be in Dutch, and will be marked by an orange background
| the year 2006 would have begun above this line; click here for 2006-2007 ; and for 2008-2009; and for 2010- | ||||||||||||||||||
| December 2005 | 16 December 1005, participation in the International Conference on Creation myths and the visual arts (M. Schipper & Daniela Merolla, convenors), Leiden: National Museum of Ethnology; Wim van Binsbergen chairs one of the sessions, and briefly presents his ongoing research on Mythological archaeology, specifically in so far as it offers clues to prehistoric African art; click here for this short presentation; and click here for a more extensive treatment 15 December 2005, seminar paper by Professor Geoffrey Tangwa (Head of Philosophy, University of Yaounde I, Cameroon) at the African Studies Centre, Leiden; the discussant will be Wim van Binsbergen 14 December 2005, at Wim van Binsbergen's PhD seminar, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Prof. Sanya Osha presents a paper entitled 'African philosophy and the project of modernity' 1st December 2005, public lecture commissioned by AfricAvenir, Berlin, Germany, on 'Potential and Contradictions of the African Renaissance' (click here for abstract) |
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| November 2005 |
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| October 2005 | published: Wim van Binsbergen, 2005, ' ''An incomprehensible miracle'' -- Central African clerical intellectualism versus African historic religion: A close reading of Valentin Mudimbe's Tales of Faith', in: Kai Kresse, ed., Reading Mudimbe, special issue of the Journal of African Cultural Studies, 17, 1, June 2005: 11-65; this is a very slightly edited version of the original 2001 SOAS conference paper, available in html form ever since (click here, also for a shortened version and a TXT version) | |||||||||||||||||
| September 2005 |
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| Augustus 2005 |
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| July 2005 | Quest:
An African Journal of Philosophy/Revue Africaine de
Philosophie: volumes
XVII and XVIII are currently being prepared for
publication and will appear in the Summer of 2005 International
conference, Leiden, abstract: African divination, the central topic of this timely international conference, does not exist in isolation – just as little as Africa itself does. All literate civilisations of both the Old and the New World possessed elaborate, multiple divination systems – and usually these systems came under the spell of astral divination (astrology) as history proceeded. Two millennia ago, Aristotle, Cicero and Plutarch, and many of their philosophical colleagues, reflected on the rationality and credibility of divination, establishing a philosophical tradition of reflection and debate on divination that has extended to Augustine, Ibn Ezra, Aquinas, Popper, Feyerabend, etc. I am not aware of any non-literate society in historical times that lacks all forms of divination – but there are severe limitations to my cross-cultural overview, and I may be mistaken; we shall come back extensively to the point of divination as a possible cultural universal. Divination, in Africa and elsewhere, tends to pose a strange Janus face to the North Atlantic epistemologist: apparently irrational in its choice of sources of knowledge, it subsequently pursues the acquisition of knowledge in a rational fashion: systematically, intersubjectively, with insistent recourse to causal reasoning and usually with at least the appearances of logic (underneath which often communicative tautologies may be detected). Today the study of divination is the, somewhat disreputable, privilege of anthropology, African Studies, the classics, Sinology, and the history of ideas. Their contention is that divination as a form of knowledge production is nonsensical pseudo-science, but that it is interesting as a cultural phenomenon, especially as a form of local wisdom helping people to sort out their small-scale social and psychological crises. Since 1990 I have been both a practicing African diviner, and a professor of intercultural philosophy/ cultural anthropology. In that period, globalisation and long-range comparative research have been major themes in my work. All this brings me to address, in this key note, the epistemological puzzle of divination, as well as its ramifications in space and time at the descriptive and comparative level. |
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| June 2005 | Wim van Binsbergen at the Research
Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) and Harvard
(Department of Sanskrit and Asian Studies) pre-symposium
on Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia (6-8 June 2005;
section on Comparative Myth); and at Kyoto University
Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies (master
classes, 10-14 June 2005); click
here for full description and access to conference paper 1st June, 2005: GRIPh (Groningen Research Institute of Philosophy) Lecture, Groningen, the Netherlands: Wim van Binsbergen, ‘A major challenge for intercultural philosophy: ‘‘9/11’’ and its aftermath’; click here for abstract; and click here for a provisional version of the full argument |
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| May 2005 | Sanya Osha (Centre for Civil Society, University of Kwazulu Natal, South Africa; formerly of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and about to take up a Visiting Fellowship at the African Studies Centre, Leiden; member of the Editorial Board of Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy) publishes 'The Frontier of Interculturality: A Review of Wim van Binsbergen's Intercultural Encounters.....' in: Africa Development, XXX, 1-2, 2005, pp. 239-250. Africa Development is the journal of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) | |||||||||||||||||
| April 2005 |
Second One-day departmental workshop: The mediatic
turn: Aspects of the ontology of Mediation, Philosophical
Faculty, Erasmus University Rotterdam, conveners: Jos de
Mul & Wim van Binsbergen; in this context, Wim van
Binsbergen hopes to present a paper entitled:
‘Transcendence and the mediatic turn: An
intercultural philosophical perspective from Africa’
(provisional title) Research programme on Intercultural conflict: Around
the chair of intercultural philosophy, EUR,
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| March 2005 | Wim van Binsbergen, 'Towards an
Intercultural Hermeneutics of Post-‘9/11’
Reconciliation: Comments on Richard Kearney’s
‘Thinking After Terror: An Interreligious
Challenge’, paper in press in the Journal of
Interdisciplinary Crossroads, Vol. 2, No. 1 (April,
2005) (click
here for PDF; and click
here for html)
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| February 2005 | 28 February: One-day departmental
workshop: The mediatic turn: Aspects of the ontology of
Mediation, Philosophical Faculty, Erasmus University
Rotterdam, conveners: Jos de Mul & Wim van Binsbergen
The Shikanda Forum and Message Board is initiated;
click in the following box: collaboration with Karin Wesselink of the Youth and Development journal Samsam towards a website on West African Vodun religion
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| Januari 2005 | collaboration with A.M.Boer, M.A., Museon museum, The Hague, towards a popular book on man-eating predators | |||||||||||||||||
| current year: 2005 (begins above this line; the closer to the top of the page, the nearer to 2006) | ||||||||||||||||||
| December 2004 | 1st December 2004: 'The problem of evil:
Introductory remarks from a combined philosophical and
anthropological perspective', paper read at the
International Colloquium on the Naturalness of Evil,
Leiden: African Studies Centre (revised text to be made
available shortly) From September 2004 to January 2005 Wim van Binsbergen had a sabbatical, which he mainly used to finish his 350 pp. study entitled: Ethnicity in Mediterranean proto-history: Theoretical and methodological explorations (summary to be made available shortly) and to write and publish the following two books of poetry (click here for Wim van Binsbergen's other literary work)
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| October 2004 |
16 oktober, 19.00 hrs: in the programme 'Spiritus' of the Netherlands TV network NCRV an item is devoted to Wim van Binsbergen's initiation and current work as a sangoma, as a form of African spirituality thus represented in the North Atlantic The renewed interest in the study of African migration has prompted me to make available on the web An extensive critique of Robert Bates' approach to migration in Zambia, based on multivariate analysis (PDF), published in Cultures et développement 1977, also presented at the African Studies Centre international seminar on migration, Leiden, 1977 |
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| September 2004 | On the occasion of the inauguration of
the Pieter de la Court gebouw housing the entire faculty
of social sciences (and a few independent institutions,
such as the African Studies Centre), May 1990, a photo
exhibition was organised; Wim van
Binsbergen's contribution dealt with Ushwana: The name
inheriting ritual of the Zambian Nkoya', and has now been
prepared for the web (Dutch version; English version
in preparation) for the programme 'Spiritus' of the Netherlands TV network NCRV Wim van Binsbergen prepared a new photo essay of his training and initiation as sangoma spirit medium, 1989-1991 |
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| August 2004 | In June 2003, Wim van Binsbergen
presented a paper: 'Manchester as a birthplace of
agency', paper read at the international conference on
'Agency in Africa: An old theme, a new issue', Erasmus
University Rotterdam (chair of intercultural philosophy)
and Theme Group on Agency in Africa, African Studies
Centre (convenors Rijk van Dijk, Wouter van Beek and Wim
van Binsbergen, 16 June 2003; this an excerpt (chapter 3)
from an unpublished book manuscript: Wim van Binsbergen: Van
Vorstenhof tot mediaprodukt: Een culturele antropologie
van Afrika, vooral Zambia, 1995, ca. 474 pp. Although
there has been no time yet to translate this piece into
English, it is now made available in a revised Dutch
version, with separate extensive bibliography; bij dezen
dus in een herziene Nederlandse versie met uitvoerige
aparte bibliografie to the above piece on the Manchester School, a photographic essay by Wim van Binsbergen has now been added
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| July 2004 | As an activity of the Africa Research Centre, Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Louvain University, Belgium, an experimental seminar 'Onder den Tooren' took place 1-3 July. Wim van Binsbergen presented an updated version of his extensive paper 'Spirituality and transcendence' (Dutch version). | |||||||||||||||||
| June 2004 | 28 June 2004: At the department of the
Philosophy of Man and Culture ('Ontology of Mediation'),
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Wim van Binsbergen
presented a revised version of his paper on 'The underpinning of
scientific knowledge systems: Epistemology or hegemonic
power? The implications of Sandra Harding’s critique
of North Atlantic science for the appreciation of African
knowledge systems'. (click for
details) Some of Wim van Binsbergen's older
articles inspired by his fieldwork among the Nkoya
people, Zambia, appeared to have still some relevance in
the context of the discussions of the African Studies
Centre's Theme Group on Agency in Africa, and therefore a
slightly updated html version was prepared of: Now published in Polylog 2003, 4:
(English version; and also the Spanish version: )
due to pressing commitments at the African Studies
Centre, this presentation had to be cancelled) 25 juni
2004, 11:15 hrs: 'Intercontinental complementarity in the
current construction of ubuntu philosophy', Wim
van Binsbergen's contribution to Afrocentric
Management Approaches in South Africa, A two-day
expert-meeting jointly organised by the Department of
Management and Organisation (Faculty of Economics and
Business Administration) and the Department of Culture,
Organisation and Management (Faculty of Social Sciences),
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Convenors: Prof. Dr. P.A.E
van de Bunt, H. van den Heuvel (MA) and Dr. H. Wels, in
co-operation with: South Africa Vrije Universiteit
Strategic Alliances (SAVUSA), Thursday 24th and Friday
25th June 2004; Venue: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; It is a fundamental requirement for the production of valid and ethnically acceptable intercultural knowledge that local people actively and with their own powers of initiative and control participate in the production of social and historical scholarly work concerning their own community. Without feedback, however critical, the production of Africanist knowledge is doomed to remain sterile, hegemonic and irrelevant. In recognition of this principle of intercontinental fellowship in knowledge production, for several decades now major results of Wim van Binsbergen's (Tatashikanda's) work among the Nkoya people of western central Zambia have been circulated locally in printed form, either at greatly reduced prices, or free of charge. In this way Likota lya Bankoya (popular Nkoya edition) and Tears of Rain: Ethnicity and history in central western Zambia (Zambian edition in collaboration with Zambia Educational Publishing House) found their way to the Nkoya people. With the growth of Internet use in Zambia, it has now become opportune to compile a website offering all of Wim van Binsbergen's publications on the Nkoya, along with background information, bibliographies, etc. This website has now been completed and was launched on 15 June 2004. It will ultimately be incorporated in the present Shikanda domain. 8 Juni 2004: 'Het kaleidoscopisch karakter van de
Afrikaanse sociale werkelijkheid -- beelden van een NGO
in Benin', bijdrage van Wim van Binsbergen aan de
jaarlijkse studiedag van het Nederlandse Ministerie van
Buitenlandse Zaken, Den Haag, en het
Afrika-Studiecentrum, Leiden |
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| May 2004 | 29 May, 2004, 'The
Leopard in the Garden of Eating: From food for thought to
thought for food –
28 May, 2004: member of 'inner' (i.e. decisive) PhD examination committee, drs Dolphijn, Erasmus University Rotterdam; title of thesis: Foodscapes: Towards a Deleuzian ethics of consumption (supervisors Paul Patton and Arjo Klamer); defense 28 May 2004 27-28 May, 2004: 8-10 May 2004: Round Table on Myth, Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University, Boston, USA, with a paper on ‘Long-range mythical continuities across Asia and Africa: Linguistic and iconographic evidence concerning leopard symbolism’ |
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| April 2004 |
For the next
academic year (2004-2005) a new course format was defined
for Wim van Binsbergen's teaching on Intercultural
Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam /
One of the projects currently being finalised is the book Four Tablets: An African divination system through space and time, initiated in the early 1990s, and since then the topic of numerous articles and papers. In the process, a major 1996 paper was revised and prepared for the Web: 'The astrological origin of Islamic geomancy' (paper read at The SSIPS/ SAGP 1996, 15th Annual Conference: ‘Global and Multicultural Dimensions of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy and Social Thought: Africana, Christian, Greek, Islamic, Jewish, Indigenous and Asian Traditions’, Binghamton University, Department of Philosophy/ Center for Medieval and Renaissance studies (CEMERS), October 1996 (PDF))
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| March 2004 |
External examiner, PhD thesis, department of anthropology, University of Cape Town, South Africa
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| February 2004 | guest lecture: 'The dynamics of globalisation in Africa: An overview', lecture in the M.A. course Globalization & Inequality: An Interfaculty Course in Development Studies (Prof. Louk de la Rive Box), Universiteit Maastricht, 13th edition 2003-2004, 12 february 2004, 13.00-15.00 hrs | |||||||||||||||||
| January 2004 | 15-17 January 2004: Participation in the Deuxième Conference des Ambassadeurs de la Renaissance Africaine, Cotonou, Bénin (organised by Africa Cultures), where Wim van Binsbergen was scheduled to present a paper on 'Historical Trajectories of Pan-Africanism' | |||||||||||||||||
| 2004 begins above this line; click here for the years 2002 and 2003 | ||||||||||||||||||
on this page only topicalities for 2004-2005 are included; the series was initiated in 2002; click here for the years 2002 and 2003; and here for the years 2006-2007; and here for the years 2008-2009; and here for the years 2010-2011; and here for the years 2012-2013
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proceed to the Shikanda portal in order to access all other websites by Wim van Binsbergen: general (intercultural philosophy, African Studies); ethnicity-identity-politics; Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate; Ancient Models of Thought in Africa, the Ancient Near East, and prehistory; sangoma consultation; literary work |
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